The beauty of SimCity is in the details

Zooming from micro to macro and back again.

The first thing that an old-school SimCity fan is likely to notice about the series' upcoming revamp, due on PCs in February 2013, is the level of detail. This includes graphical detail for sure; cities are finally rendered in full 3D, and you can twist, pan, and zoom the view to your heart's content. The graphics system uses tilt-shift effects and saturated colors to make it seem like you're viewing a tiny, living model world, an impression that is only enhanced by the satisfying thunk and cloud of dust that comes from placing buildings and objects.

But it's the level of detail in the simulation that's really stunning. While the SimCity franchise has always done a good job of covering macro-level trends in the life of your city, the new SimCity lets you get incredibly specific about your citizens. When you set up a residential zone next to a curvy cul-de-sac, for instance, you can actually see the "for sale" signs on the individual houses, and watch the moving vans filling in the vacancies.

Each of those residential families is fully simulated, to the point where you can follow them to their jobs or shopping trips as the days progress. The detail extends to other systems, too: you can actually see your coal piles dwindle as each individual truck picks up the raw fuel and delivers it to a smog-spewing power plant, or watch the cops in a shootout with a distinct criminal. It's a bit mesmerizing.

As far as tracking the larger, macro-level systems in your city, SimCity exposes information in distinct viewable layers, which strip all the extraneous stuff away and "expose the brains to the players" at a glance, as the developers put it. When you place a fire station or a sewage plant, for instance, the game briefly hides all the detritus of the city to show you a live, color-coded circle representing the effective coverage for the new installation. You can then upgrade these buildings after placement with decorative and functional additions, using a snap-on system based on the editor Maxis created for Spore.

The micro- and macro-level details combine to quickly give players a robust idea of how SimCity's interconnected systems play off of each other. Protesting workers in front of a factory, for instance, will tell you point-blank (with a click) that they quit because the factory isn't getting any power. You'll probably notice that those listless, unemployed residents will turn to crime, both by the graffiti that quickly appears on the sides of buildings and by the appearance of individual criminals, such as an arsonist that sets a window-exploding fire in a skyscraper. When things are working, though, the supply trucks and commuter traffic will tell you just as well as the layered view of things like connected power and water systems.

Annoying neighbors for fun and profit

Enlarge/ You probably don't like the pollution this kind of neighboring city feeds you, but you might appreciate the easily accessible jobs...

Maxis / EA

SimCity's persistent, asynchronous multiplayer is focused on joint goals—major projects that can help different nearby cities in different ways. In the demo, this took the form of a new international airport that was being built on the empty land in between three very different cities.

The heavily industrial city to the northwest needs such an airport to provide additional shipping and freight opportunities, while the tourism-focused city to the northeast wants to be able to bring in more fans for a major sporting event at a new stadium (this timed event added a bit of urgency to the airport's completion as well). The newly created, residential-heavy city to the south, meanwhile, mainly saw the airport as a source of new jobs.

A major, multicity project like this requires a lot of varied resources, making them ideal for cooperation between multiple cities. That industrial city, for instance, is perfectly set up to create a plant that can produce the metallic alloys the airport requires, while the southern city with a surfeit of unemployed people can contribute the raw manpower needed to construct the terminals.

Cities in the new SimCity can share resources in other ways as well. It's relatively easy for a darkened city to connect up to a thriving power grid from the industrial metropolis next door, though the power-heavy city needs to grant permission for this kind of connection first (and it's not exactly clear what's in it for them, other than the joy of power altruism).

Connecting cities by road can also help automatically balance some deficiencies via the magic of the commute. In the demo, for instance, connecting a road from the new city to the town with a lot of empty storefronts led to an immediate traffic jam of cars eager to flood in for work opportunities. In short, if you want your city to be a success, you're going to have to make it an attractive place to live and work compared to its surroundings.

Connecting different cities isn't always a positive, though. Nearby towns can also share negative externalities like pollution or crime. In the E3 demo, a criminal in a flashy red car was seen driving in from a largely lawless section of the industrial town to rob a bank in the affluent part of the tourist-heavy city, zooming right by a police station as he did.

With a required Internet connection to play, some might be worried that SimCity will run into Diablo III style server problems at launch. The developers are adamant that they'll be putting backstops in place to prevent those kind of day one issues, but said that if it becomes a problem they could briefly allow people to play offline while things get fixed. That said, the game is designed to be played in that persistent, multiplayer world, so players won't be able to gleefully destroy a city and then go back to an earlier save file as if nothing ever happened, for instance.

I'm intrigued by the always-on multiplayer aspect of this, but I have to say, the ability to "gleefully destroy a city and then go back to an earlier save file as if nothing ever happened" was a major draw to the old SimCity games. At least to my then middle-school aged self.

Oh, hello there, EA. I see you would not like my money. Very well then. I shall take my business elsewhere.

Too many games I'd love to sit and play while winging my way across the country are suddenly requiring internet connections. That's fine and dandy, because in that case, the next Humble Bundles is going to get the money I would have paid for this game, instead.

"...That said, the game is designed to be played in that persistent, multiplayer world, so players won't be able to gleefully destroy a city and then go back to an earlier save file as if nothing ever happened, for instance."

Which is part of why this new version of SimCity will never appear on my PC.

I'm intrigued by the always-on multiplayer aspect of this, but I have to say, the ability to "gleefully destroy a city and then go back to an earlier save file as if nothing ever happened" was a major draw to the old SimCity games. At least to my then middle-school aged self.

Agreed. What's the fun if you can't destroy your whining citizens with a well placed alien invasion?

Always-on DRM, and you don't even own your city saves. You're not allowed to blow up your city with a disaster and then load a save. In fact, you're just flat not allowed to blow up your city at all, because it might negatively affect your neighbors.

They have completely, utterly screwed this up. It's supposed to be a toy, and to try to make more money, they're imposing insane, ridiculous restrictions on how you play with the toy you paid for.

If this were a single-player game, like earlier SimCities, with an entirely optional online component, I'd be all in. But as is, there is no way I would give these people money for this steaming pile of shit.

That said, the game is designed to be played in that persistent, multiplayer world, so players won't be able to gleefully destroy a city and then go back to an earlier save file as if nothing ever happened, for instance.

As someone who built a sim city 2000 city that covered every square and replaced all housing with arcologies I can say that this is a huge turn off, half the fun of building something up is knocking it down again.

I certainly hope there is some sort of switch. I use SimCity 4 to teach middle school kids about infrastructure as part of a nationwide engineering competition. Having to worry about internet connections and multiplayer issues would make my work harder.

It sounds like you might not be able to build a generic city that does everything. Rather you'll have to cater towards a certain industry and connect to neighboring cities to balance things out. It may not be impossible to build a generic city, but it sounds like they are trying to push you away from that. Both approaches could be fun so I'd rather have the choice.

I hope the playing world is not just random, I have no desire to plop my city down to someone I don't know. I would love to have an ars world (ala minecraft) that I can share with people I communicate and cooperate with. (Kyle this is a feature set we would like you to investigate more!)

Bit worried that Kyle didn't see any monetary contribution from sharing power. Seems like the city receiving it should have to pay for it. I guess in a world where your playing with people you know you can work out deals like garbage for power or highway access..

Graphics are worse than SimCity 4's, preorder DLC, day 1 DLC, always on Origin connection, can't even destroy your own city like every single other game in the franchise... can't EA die already? Please?

Always-on DRM, and you don't even own your city saves. You're not allowed to blow up your city with a disaster and then load a save. In fact, you're just flat not allowed to blow up your city at all, because it might negatively affect your neighbors.

They have completely, utterly screwed this up. It's supposed to be a toy, and to try to make more money, they're imposing insane, ridiculous restrictions on how you play with the toy you paid for.

If this were a single-player game, like earlier SimCities, with an entirely optional online component, I'd be all in. But as is, there is no way I would give these people money for this steaming pile of shit.

This++.

I can't begin to tell you how many days of my life disappeared into SimCity 4. I absolutely LOVED that game. It was endlessly playable, in large part, because I could rewind and unf*ck myself after spending 2 days constructing something stupid. The whole thing just felt so polished and so <i>right</i>. Such a shame.

Just out of curiosity -- am I the only one on the internet that hates online coop? When it comes to creative endeavors like city building, it seems like having to work with someone else would be a complete pain in the as$. Building your city and responding to all of the data the game hits you with takes a huge amount of energy -- I just don't see how adding peer pressure could help.

There is info spread very thin across the net about the things they are taking out of this sim city (or should I say "streamlining".) The big one for me is terraforming. There will be none of it. There will also be no zoning densities. The density of a zone is defined by the size of the road next to it. The in-ability to load save files after destroying my city is also very disappointing.

I like the new simulation engine, seems a lot like CitiesXL (but it will actually work).

Also, to clear things up in here. You can play by yourself, you just have to be connected to the internet. (It's for "gameplay" purposes.)

I don't want to play SIm City multiplayer, and I don't want some dumbass next door's Detroit bringing down my city, and I want to be able to save. load, and "cheat", since the main draw of Sim City is the city building sandbox, not the resource management part.

As much as I don't want another setback for sim games, I hope this is a gigantic failure that scares the publishers away from this kind of nonsense.

This sounds like such a masterpiece that I just knew they had to find a way to screw it up. Sure enough, persistent online required.

I hate the AAA games industry so much these days. It's like companies like EA exist for the sole purpose of screwing up gaming.

Hopefully they get the message and enable offline mode in this one. I'd use the online mode sometimes, but other times I want to play without other people being involved and when I'm in the middle of nowhere without Internet.

With a required Internet connection to play, some might be worried that SimCity will run into Diablo III style server problems at launch. The developers are adamant that they'll be putting backstops in place to prevent those kind of day one issues, but said that if it becomes a problem they could briefly allow people to play offline while things get fixed. That said, the game is designed to be played in that persistent, multiplayer world, so players won't be able to gleefully destroy a city and then go back to an earlier save file as if nothing ever happened, for instance.

I was so excited about getting this game and playing it, but then I read that last paragraph...

What exactly is so wrong about playing single player loading a city from a save and destroying it for fun, and then going back to an earlier save? That was one of the awesome things about SimCity 2000/3000; you could willfully add disasters, destroy the city for fun, and then go back to your previous save.

That said, the game is designed to be played in that persistent, multiplayer world, so players won't be able to gleefully destroy a city and then go back to an earlier save file as if nothing ever happened, for instance.

I was excited until I saw this. What doesn't EA get? I accepted the always on DRM crap with Spore because it still included a single player aspect and we could always start a new game to go another direction.

I agree with the poster who mentions Minecraft I love running my own server and inviting my kids and our friends to come collaborate, what I don't want is a world where I can't spread out endlessly. The whole idea seems self limiting and to be quite honest collectivist.

so players won't be able to gleefully destroy a city and then go back to an earlier save file as if nothing ever happened, for instance.

This does not sound fun, though. Sometimes I really need to just unleash 6 simultaneous tornadoes and a series of alien invasions. I liked that about earlier games, and that it didn't ruin all the work that I put into it either.

The always-on DRM is a pain, and even less excusable than in D3 where they at least have the excuse of needing to make VERY sure item duplication doesn't happen in a real-money auction house. But I was still really interested in this game. Sim City was one of the very few games that was an automatic-buy for me when a new one was released. And with this release, the level of detail sounds incredible, and while I doubt I'd be interested in the multiplayer aspects, it's an interesting addition. Then I read this...

"the game is designed to be played in that persistent, multiplayer world, so players won't be able to gleefully destroy a city and then go back to an earlier save file as if nothing ever happened, for instance."

And suddenly, I have nearly zero interest in buying this game. While I enjoyed the building aspect of Sim City, I enjoyed the destruction aspect at least as much (maybe a bit more. lol) I guarantee that removing that aspect of the game entirely is going to kill it before it's even released.

Cities and regionsAs mayor you control all of the major decisions in your city, but why stop there? Now you will play on a much larger scale, as your city is part of a much larger region. You can control one or multiple cities in an open region on the web, in a private region shared with your friends’ cities, or in your own personal region. Each city within a given region will affect the others around it, so your decisions have an impact not only on your own city, but on your friends’ as well.

I was interested until always online. Total utterbullshit. I am not buying the game if i cant play offline. I like the social/multiplayer features, working with a friends city would be cool, but EA can go suck a giant massive telephone pole long cock for making it always online. They wont get my money.

Just out of curiosity -- am I the only one on the internet that hates online coop?

No, you're not. I hate online multiplayer in general. When playing real people, I like them to be people who I know.

What makes me absolutely LOATHE persistent multiplayer (e.g. most MMO "RPG"s) is that if you take a vacation, you end up unable to play with the same people you were playing with previously as they've now advanced well past where you were before you took a week off.

If I take a week off and my neighbors start turning into pollution stacks and that spills over to me, now what?

This just sounds like 3d high priced Farmville so far. Knowing EA, they'll charge a premium price, charge a premium monthly, then later add in annoying as hell advertising after they've built a big enough player base.

I was going to buy this game until I read this: "so players won't be able to gleefully destroy a city and then go back to an earlier save file as if nothing ever happened, for instance." They just lost a sale.

It might not be entirely a lost cause:Cities and regionsAs mayor you control all of the major decisions in your city, but why stop there? Now you will play on a much larger scale, as your city is part of a much larger region. You can control one or multiple cities in an open region on the web, in a private region shared with your friends’ cities, or in your own personal region. Each city within a given region will affect the others around it, so your decisions have an impact not only on your own city, but on your friends’ as well.

From Simcity.com

Thanks for digging that up. Honestly, I realize as a community we all hate the current trend of always online nonsense. This is the correct way to use it, it is not about DRM it is about the actual gameplay experiance. Obviously it should have an offline mode, just like steam for playing singleplayer.

They are designing the game to be more "social" and I like it, there is always something a bit empty about building an awesome city and not being able to share it with others.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area.